The Cycle

This edition was printed on a Heidelberg platen press by Richard Lawrence from the original blocks. The jacket and endpapers were printed on a Vandercook proof press on G.F. Smith Colorplan paper. Cranfield Colours supplied the ink and Green Street Bindery, Oxford completed the book.

Inspired by my experiences working for a small charity, The Cycle follows in the tradition of novels in woodcuts where hand-cut images replace text as the narrative form. The narrative follows a couples’ struggle to bring up two children on low wages whilst dealing with the realisation that their lives do not match up with what is presented to them. The brothers end up repeating the parents’ mistakes but after a chance intervention, one brother begins to make different choices and starts to change his life … The narrative is told within 187 engraved blocks, and the book uses a total of 200 engraved blocks. Each block took one day to engrave, with several months of drawing and preparation to reach that stage. The Cycle took me 2 years to complete and I made only 12 copies, hand printed and bound by myself, for the first edition.